Thinkbox at SIGGRAPH with cloud-enabled pipelines

Thinkbox Software showed off some new features from the upcoming new release of Deadline, a high-volume compute management solution that enables studios to link any combination of local and cloud-based resources into one logical pipeline. Currently entering beta testing, Deadline 8 will introduce on-demand metered licensing to work with both local and cloud-based farms alongside existing permanent and temporary licenses.

Deadline 8 also adds a Proxy Server application that allows users to securely connect to and interact with remote and cloud-based render farms over public Internet without the need for a virtual private network (VPN). The new version includes an updated user interface with enhanced interactivity and a new sandboxed Python environment to facilitate additional rendering and event stability. Currently, Deadline supports cloud rendering on Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and OpenStack, among others.

Leading up to SIGGRAPH 2015, Thinkbox released Deadline Cloud Wizard for Google Cloud Platform and a beta version for Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). These wizards automate the configuration of cloud-based render farms running Deadline into a one-time automated task completed in less than 30 minutes. Similarly, Deadline was made available on Microsoft Azure Marketplace for one-click access to the software.

Thinkbox also recently launched the beta for Deadline 7.2. New features include new Quick Draft options to create movies from rendered images or perform file conversions without having to create template scripts. Integration with NIM Labs’ NIM pipeline management tool enables the creation of NIM renders, and automates the uploading of thumbnails and movies to NIM when jobs complete. Enhanced support for SideFX Software’s Houdini introduces Jigsaw region rendering, HServer interactive rendering, and HQueue simulation node slicing.